A Colorado Department of Corrections program is now teaching career skills in renewable energy fields to inmates whose pre-arrest job capabilities may have become obsolete while they have been in prison.

Inmates who pass the program at Fremont Correctional Facility in Cañon City earn certificates and 20 college credits. It could give them the edge they need to get a job, which in turn could help them stay out of trouble, class instructor Randy Twilliger said.

After he heard about the new vocational class, Tommy Shanteler, who is serving an eight-year prison sentence for escape, immediately recognized its advantage.

“Everything is turning green; why not get educated?” Shanteler said in a recent interview in his third-tier cell as he leaned against a barred window ledge. “It’s my chance to become a productive member of society.”

Shanteler, 26, spoke rapidly and his hands moved quickly later in the day as he showed two fellow inmates how to wire components of a house solar system together on a prison-made control panel. His future is in green energy production, he proclaimed.

Twilliger said he’s taught vocational courses for years, but he’s never had such high attendance and participation. His prison students attend class five hours a day and then return to their cells to do homework out of a textbook. They also write essays and take challenging tests.

“They all kind of know this is the new frontier,” he said. “I think this is really going to take off.”

Twilliger has had to use leftover scraps of metal and wiring and discarded boards to piece together teaching materials like the control panel Shanteler was working on, he said. There is little funding for such a program, so he makes do with what he can find.

Carol Ruggieri, who oversees educational programs at Fremont, said the prison hardly has any trouble with inmates in the program.

“They know it’s a privilege,” Ruggieri said.

If they get in a fight in their cellblock, they will get booted out of the class, she said.

Michael East, 23, of Denver has been rotating in and out of reform schools and prison since he stole a $300 bicycle when he was 9. Theft was his trade.

Renewable energy is offering him a new perspective about his prospects in life, he said. For the first time he can believe he has a chance to make a living in a field he is excited about. What he liked doing the most when he was free was hiking and camping in the mountains.

On his prison bunk bed, he dreams of a job working outdoors, possibly repairing or building wind turbines, East said.

“I would like to be part of the process of stopping the destruction of the rain forest,” he said. “I’m tired of doing this, of living this lifestyle.”

At 53, David Todd won’t be able to return to Colorado Springs to resume his career as a paramedic. The state doesn’t issue licenses to felons, he said.

“I’ve got to look for a new job,” Todd said.

He too sees his renewable energy class as a bridge to a new life, possibly in Wyoming.

Shanteler’s opportunity may not be far away. His release is coming in about two months.

He’s learned the basics of a renewable energy career so well that Twilliger said he plans on giving him a good job reference.

Shanteler was excited about the possibility of earning a paycheck.

“I’m paroling homeless to Boulder. I could earn $13.50 as a laborer,” he said. “That’s awesome.”

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.

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